Here With Me
by Mentally-Unstable
Summary: Friendship begins to take it's toll, and feelings may be discovered after it's too late. Merlin/OC, possible slight  Leon/OC.


**Fandom:** Merlin (BBC)  
><strong>Title:<strong> Here With Me  
><strong>Rating<strong>: PG-13  
><strong>Genre:<strong> Romance/Drama  
><strong>Summary:<strong> Friendship begins to take it's toll, and feelings may be discovered after it's too late. Merlin/OC, possible(slight) Leon/OC.

**Notes**: PLEASE READ. I began writing this for the Original Character Big Bang over at LiveJournal, and needless to say, I didn't finish it. However, I really want to finish it anyway so I revised it a lot in order to post it here. Hopefully it's readable and enjoyable. I also intend to fill in a lot of the original characters past and backstory as the story progresses via flashbacks and conversations as opposed to just wading through it all and boring myself silly. Anyway, read and enjoy! If you don't enjoy, well, it's fine with me cos I enjoyed writing it :)

**Prologue**

Audi stood outside her small home and took in a deep breath, inhaling the scent of the dewy air of morning. It had been nearly a year since she had begun living in the city of Camelot, and she began to think back on how wonderul it had been, especially considering she didn't even wanted to be there in the first place, and how she had come to be there. Her family had quite a few issues that they had refused to inform her of, and decided it would be better for her to be sent off to live in Camelot. She frowned, thinking back on it. She had become accustomed to her life, yes, but that didn't stop it from bugging her. Mornings like this reminded her how much she missed her family, how much she missed her old home.

However, she had managed to form her own little family here in Camelot. The city had been chosen for her by her Mother, due to the fact that her Mother's old friend, Gaius, lived there. When Audi arrived and met Gaius for only the second time in her entire life, she had no idea how much she would come to love and cherish him. Or his (at the time) odd little housemate, Merlin.

Of course, her opinion of Merlin had changed over time. While she had started out thinking of him as odd and a nuisance, she now cherished him more than she could ever begin to explain. Perhaps it had been the trust he'd shown in revealing his secret to her, she thought, and then smiled as she remembered the situation which had brought that about.

He had gone from annoyance, to friend, to brother, to something more that she just couldn't quite put her finger on. When he was happy, so was she. And when he was sad or upset, she almost couldn't handle it.

So when he'd fallen in love, only to have it ripped away from him ... Audi didn't know what to do. He was broken, and it had taken him a long time to get over it.

But he'd slowly been getting better. Each day he'd smile a little more. Each morning, his eyes would appear a single shade brighter. He cracked his usual jokes about Prince Arthur and he was as skillful and deft as ever at masquerading his secret.

But deep down she knew he was hurting. He wouldn't open up to anyone at first, not even to Gaius, but one night she cornered him and told him that if he didn't talk to someone, he was going to explode, and since she didn't want to be short a best friend, he may as well talk to her. So he did. Sort of. A sentance here, a paragraph there, to describe how he had felt or was feeling. Then he would go about his business as usual and she would oblige him in leaving it at that, because she was just happy he was talking.

But that night, she had come up to his room after Gaius had retired. She'd forgotten his blanket had been in the wash and hung up to dry, and she was bringing it to him before she turned in for the night herself. But he'd said something to her before she had the chance to say good night. Something that stopped her dead in her tracks and froze ever muscle in her body.

_"I...I loved her."_

She had suspected that he had loved Freya. And not just loved her the way he loved Audi, but loved Freya in the way that soul mates love one another. The way that people love so deeply, they would fight and die brutally for the other, because she knew Merlin had been tempted to do just that.

They'd stayed up half that night, huddled together on the edge of his bed. He would talk quietly, softly, and she could feel his breath on her ear as he did so. She absorbed every word, took it into her being, and gave him advice where she could. When he cried and tried to turn his head so she wouldn't see him, she took hold of his chin and made him look at her, and she would wipe away each tear as it trailed down his gaunt cheeks. It was strangely beautiful to see him cry, she'd thought. Sort of like what an angel might look like if it shed a tear. But it also broke her heart in two to know that he was hurting this bad and all she could do was listen and nod and hold his hand tightly in hers.

It was well into the night before he'd fallen asleep-she knew because she wouldn't leave until he did. He laid back, stretching his long body across his tiny cot, and she spread the blanket over him. He'd smiled softly up at her, his blue eyes meeting her brown in the dim light of the dying candle on his nightstand, "You're the best friend anyone could ever have, you know?" He asked sofly, his voice slightly stuffed up due to his crying.

She'd smiled, and hidden the sadness in her eyes quite well, "I try, Merlin." She patted his arm, and pushed aside a lock of his thick black hair that had made it's way toward his eye, "Go to sleep."

He was in deep slumber within five minutes. When she was sure he was unconscious, she retreated and closed his door quietly, making her way out of the home, past Gaius asleep on his cot, and out the door heading to her own home just down the street. She waited until she was inside and out of side and lying on her bed, waiting for rest, waiting for peace. Waiting to cry herself to sleep. All over a broken heart that wasn't even hers.

With a sigh, Audi shook her head to clear her thoughts and went back inside to get ready for the coming day.


End file.
